Ed Latimore details his transition from a professional boxer to a physics graduate and sober writer, driven by financial instability and a near-fatal accident. He critiques the NCAA's hypocrisy in restricting athlete compensation while schools profit from their likenesses, predicting inevitable legislative changes across states like Texas. Drawing on A Course in Miracles and Bruce Lee, Latimore advocates for active forgiveness over justice to achieve inner peace. His strategy of authentic text-based sharing has fueled exponential social media growth, attracting followers like Rick Rubin and Donald Trump Jr., proving that value-driven content transcends traditional fame pitfalls. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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From Boxing to Business00:07:51
Thanks for doing this, man.
I really appreciate it.
You guys are the last minute guys.
Yeah, it is kind of last minute.
I'll let you know I was here, but it's okay.
Some of the last minute ones end up being the best ones.
For people out there listening, give me sort of like a brief background on who you are and where you came from.
So I'm Ed Lattimore.
I write a lot of material.
I say my motto on my website and for all the content I create is I take what I learned the hard way and I break it down so you can learn it the easy way.
And some of the things I'll learn via, you know, the hard way, moderation and self control, dealing with my alcoholism.
I have a lot of articles about dealing with that, becoming sober, becoming sober and socializing.
Some of the things you'll have to face and deal with the demons that you may not be prepared for, prepared to deal with.
Yeah.
I'll write a lot about just improving yourself in general.
I also write about growing on social media.
We were just talking about the whole SEO idea.
And to me, it seems like a really intuitive and automatic.
Kind of thing like, okay, if I say a thing and I capture this attention, then how do I make it grow?
And I'm really big on doing it without being a troll.
Like, I don't talk about politics, I don't put people down, I don't try to put any negativity out in the world.
I'm a firm believer in if you deliver value via entertainment or education, that people will come and find you.
However, you have to have done the work to be a valuable person so people don't just go, oh, this is another guy spouting off timeless wisdom.
Like, no, yeah, it's very oversaturated on social media right now with people.
You know, being gurus of this, that, and the third.
Freaking entrepreneurial gurus, Gary Vee's, all those guys.
There's so many of them.
Everyone wants to do it because they just see these guys saying these things and they forget.
Like, I'm not like 100% familiar with like Gary Vee's story, but I know that Gary Vee didn't wake up one day and go, I want to spout off a bunch of things and make money.
He was like, no, he went and made money first and then came and said, okay, here's some lessons to take from it and decided that was another cool place he wants to be.
And I think that's just a natural extension of any type of hard work.
That a person does, they end up there one way or the other because after you have done some things, you get enough questions about said things.
And some people are motivated to teach in one way or the other, whether it be one on one or to a group.
There's always some way you want to distribute value, redistribute value, I should say, to people who you believe kind of helped you come up.
But that's me on my website.
And a lot of things that I did outside of that beforehand is we talked about how you gain this ability to say stuff that people listen to and take seriously.
I boxed professionally for six years, amateur for five before that.
Wow.
I had a great, great time, great career, especially as an amateur.
I went further than I thought I would go as an amateur because I started late.
I didn't walk into a gym until I was 22, which is ancient, but the advantage.
For boxing, that's ancient, right?
That's a dinosaur, man.
But the advantage is that I'm a heavyweight.
And what people have to understand is if you start boxing when you're a kid and you just keep at it with the training and everything, You're probably not probably me, you just unless you're like six or taller, you're not gonna put the mask on naturally.
So, I was off doing other sports and getting stronger, and I decided to go box.
I mean, you look at the top guys, Deontay Wilder's older, I start and started older than me at that too.
I believe that so is Joshua.
Uh, the there's another another guy out there, I can't remember his name right now.
Come to me, uh, but there, but a lot of guys at the heavier weight divisions they not only start later, but then they can last longer.
One of my favorite guys that I watch.
Who's, you know, recently is a guy named Amir Mansour.
Amir Mansour was killing guys, right?
Yeah.
Just dropping them.
And then unfortunately, Amir was out there doing some crimes and got pinched, I believe, in something related to drugs.
Yeah.
And went away for 10 years.
Didn't get out because I'm looking at his box wreck where you can see everyone's record.
I'm like, man, what happened to Amir?
10 years out, comes right back out at 37 and starts killing at 5 till he was 45.
Wow.
And did a great job.
I mean, the only fights I saw him rightfully lose, maybe one, he lost one fight that would have got him a title shot because he.
bit through his tongue and just couldn't continue.
That kind of thing was awful.
But yeah, when you start heavyweight boxing, you can go a little later, but I didn't have any like natural athletic ability, I think.
And I went really far with that and had a great time.
And then I got my success as an amateur helped me move well as a pro until, you know, I went as far as I could at the time.
And also while I was doing that, I was enlisted in the army because, and I enlisted because I figured I don't have any skills outside of boxing.
Like I had just been, you know, I've been spending the past, Decade beating up people and not really gaining anything, and I know I can't beat up people forever.
Not only that, but there's not that much money in the sport, people think you're getting paid.
I mean, my highest payday was not even five figures, like to put that in perspective.
And that's standard.
I think Carl Frotch, he's a champion, he did some research on this and put it together.
He said that 97% of fighters are going to have to get a job, really, after they quit, like and not just like, oh, they're not doing anything, they know you got to get there's no unions, no one cares about.
Fighter, it's a very much a gladiator kind of bottom of the barrel sport.
A lot of gyms are in poor neighborhoods, and that is not a coincidence.
It's cheap.
I mean, what do you need?
You need gloves and aggression.
I mean, a ring is optional, especially when you're coming up as an amateur.
You know, you compete in one, but I've been to some gyms where, quite literally, it's in a corner of a warehouse, and someone took and used those two walls to corner as two sides of the square, and the other two they put some rope around, and that was all they had.
So, you see that a lot in the sport.
And I just, I had an experience, this one experience.
I was walking from the gym when I was an amateur.
And for whatever reason, I left my phone and my iPod at home.
And that kept me looking forward.
So I could see when somebody's car came up and lost control off the sidewalk.
And I jumped out the way and I was like, huh, that was close.
I could lose boxing at any time.
Let me do something else with my life and start building that up.
Plus, there was just the pain points and everything.
So, you know, I went and got my degree in physics while I was.
Busy being a pro and enlisted in the military, and I chose physics for lots of other reasons.
Yeah, why physics?
That wasn't the original goal.
The original goal was math, and I chose math because I thought that I was going to have to go to school or I thought I was going to have to work while I was boxing and go to school, right?
So I'm already planning to be super busy.
And what ends up happening is I go to the military, and the reason I figure I'm busy is because there are going to be lab sciences and any other sciences, and I looked at like Where are all the high paying jobs, and they all need a math.
So I said, okay, you got to learn math.
That's just what's got to happen.
I go, and in my military, my occupational specialty, my MOS for the military was 94 Alpha.
And that means I had to go do a lot of work with electronics.
And as part of my training, I went through this thing called BMAT and Fort Lee, basic mechanical and electronic theory.
And I was like, oh, this is even cooler.
I think I want to be an electrical engineer.
And all the engineers have to take physics.
And so I take physics when I start class.
And my first physics class, you got to do this thing with projectile motion.
You got to predict where a pellet is going to land with no other forces acting on it but gravity and the initial acceleration.
Thinking Ahead Like a GM00:06:16
And it landed where I said it was going to land.
And I said, yo, that's like magic.
I want to do that instead.
And so that's how I ended up there.
I mean, that's pretty crazy.
I stuck with it because I don't really understand the idea of quitting.
I understand being beat out of something.
That's how I approached boxing.
I said, I'm going to go as long as I can.
Someone's going to have to tell me I suck or I'm going to have to get injured.
Okay.
And what ended up happening is I got injured as a pro.
And then my coach was like, dude, My coach.
Oh, he's like, Man, you're doing all this stuff.
Your life is great.
Why are you still here?
Like, do you understand that every time you walk in the ring, you have a chance of being permanently altered in a way that can alter your life and not in a positive direction?
I mean, he didn't say it exactly like that, but that's kind of how I filtered it.
Basically, he's like, You know, I'm your friend.
I care about you.
You don't need to do this anymore.
And so I walked away from that and really put a lot more energy into my website and into my writing.
And my chess game, too, which is your chess game.
Yeah, yeah.
I started competing in chess this year.
That's sick.
I saw that in the video.
And I love chess.
We need to get a chess table here.
I know.
We should have one.
I love playing chess.
I suck so bad when I'm playing.
You know what?
I was like, well, and was progressing from where I was to where I'm now.
I really wanted to take it seriously.
I'd always kind of just been playing on chess.com.
So I said, okay, if I'm going to.
I want to talk about chess on social media, and I'm always going to say how much I love it.
Then I have to go and start competing OTB over the board.
So I started registering tournaments and working on my game.
And then that led to me getting a coach who found out, and he is a great coach, Eric Kislik, for anybody listening who's looking for an international master.
He's gained that title, and he's really, I understand the game better.
I told him what was wrong.
I was like, this is where I'm frustrated and I don't know what to do here.
And I feel lost when these things come up.
And he's like, it's okay.
He breaks.
And he breaks.
He's got all these.
Because a good teacher gets used to seeing the same problems in the students over and over again.
And he, in chess, it was no different.
He actually had this thing drawn up.
He's like, here's what you're going to do in the semi open and open positions.
Ask yourself these questions, see what it looks like here.
And I'm like, And it changed my entire way of looking at the game because before I was like, I make this move and then he makes that move.
And I had, I kind of had an idea that there was a strategy element, a planning element, but I didn't really get it.
And now I see because no one's looking far ahead.
I mean, I can't remember what grandmaster said it, but a famous quote is, I don't look three moves ahead.
I think about the next move and I make the correct move every time.
And I was like, wow, that's profound.
And that's what it is because I'm looking at the game and I'm going, okay.
I see all of this stuff.
What do I focus on?
And Eric's work gave me a way to look at the game and go, I can focus on it.
So now my chess.com ratings are all over 15.
One is over 16.
And that's good.
That's like, you know, my 30 minute game, my three day game, my blitz game in 10 or 5 minutes.
And it'll keep getting stronger because I know it's not going to, you know, happen overnight.
And I'll get as good as I can.
Maybe my limit is like 1,800 and I'll never get a title.
Or maybe I could be a GM.
I don't know.
I probably can't be a GM.
GM, those guys mean.
We used to play with this guy.
There was a guy across the street from our old office in St. Petersburg.
This guy, he would come and hustle me playing chess.
Larry.
His name was Larry.
Shout out to Larry.
And he'd make me buy him, I don't, I forgot what I buy him, like cigarettes, buy a beer.
I'd buy, he'd buy me, he'd like, he beat us.
We would have to buy him a beer from the store.
If I beat you, you got to buy me a beer.
That's what it would be.
And the dude, he would beat me in less than five minutes every time.
He was like phenomenal at chess.
I remember asking him, like, how do you think that far ahead?
I'm like, I can't even think two steps ahead.
And you're thinking literally like 20 steps ahead.
How do you do it?
And he's just like, his response was, I've done it.
I've played the game so many times.
I know every way it can go.
That's basically what he's like.
I can't really think that far ahead.
I've just seen this before.
He just, I don't know if he was actually doing that.
I mean, we all think a lot of times when we're successful, we have an explanation for it.
And that explanation is an approximation filtered through what we know and our level of understanding of like how we learn a thing or how a thing works.
So, sure, he thinks he is looking ahead.
But the reality is, I mean, it's just there's probably common mistakes or patterns or whatever.
But chess is like.
It's not the best analogy for life.
I think poker or prize fighting is probably the best analogy for life, but chess is a pretty good analogy for life or certain parts of it because you're not necessarily able to see into the future.
But what you can do is take a survey of the current landscape and go, okay, I'm weak here.
I'm strong there.
This is a little behind.
I need to get caught up there.
He's got space over there.
So let me develop over here and kind of stay away from those problem areas.
And then you just make the correct move.
Over time, over time, and eventually you get into a winning position.
Now, these are critical moments.
They don't make themselves obvious, right?
I mean, sometimes they do, but most times it's not going to be an outright, ooh, there's a checkmate.
It's like, no, it's like now you have a chance to turn a possible even position into something where you have an advantage.
And then from there, if you continue to play well, you crush the game.
Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion, says, My goal every time is to play 30 good moves.
That's it.
Really?
30 good moves because there's that idea again.
Turning the Tables00:08:34
I'm not seeing ahead.
Now, I'm sure he's got tons of patterns in his mind.
He kind of knows where some things go, some things won't.
But that sums up this thinking.
And it's a really great analogy.
It's not that I'm looking six years ahead.
I used to say when I went back to school, when I was 28, I used to say, five years are going to pass anyway, right?
Am I going to turn 33 with more options or less options?
I didn't know exactly what the options were.
Someone asked me yesterday at the conference.
They were like, You know, did you know that you were going to be standing on this stage speaking to us?
I'm like, No, I had no idea.
In fact, if you want to know exactly what I was thinking, I said, Okay.
When I was doing that, I said the average salary for someone with physics is like 60,000, but the variance was incredible because there's so many things you can do with a physics degree.
And I said, I'm going to get something interesting and I'll be doing like 80K and it's going to be a great job and I have a great life because I can finally.
Eat whenever I want to.
That's always been my goal.
It's like, I just want to be able to not look at the price of the menu.
Like, nothing even balling either.
Not like a Ruth Chris steakhouse, man.
Like, I just wanted to go out and get some Chinese food, not think about whether my car was going to be declined or something like that.
Right?
That was just the initial goal.
So I made the right move when I looked at all the things that were holding me back and I said, okay, well, I got pretty good discipline, pretty good communicating.
I can work hard too.
I mean, I will make sure I learn something, but I just keep.
Losing time with the bottle, man.
I just keep losing time being drunk all the time and hungover.
So let me do something about that.
And I said, okay, you know, we're going to be sober.
We're going to do it out, try it out.
I gave myself every possible advantage I could.
I went to an AA meeting.
I told my friends, I said, look, man, texted all my friends.
I said, look, I love you guys, but I'm scared and I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to make anything in my life.
Or maybe I hurt somebody if I keep drinking.
And I mean, and when I say, I mean, I may be understating how bad it was, right?
Right.
But no, it was bad enough to where I was worried.
And I gave myself every advantage.
Single.
I immersed myself completely.
If it wasn't school, it was the army.
If it wasn't the army, it was the gym.
And if it wasn't that, me and my girl were doing something.
I was playing with my cats.
I wouldn't let anything derail me.
I was recognizing that one little weakness, right?
And then from there, I'm able to make things happen.
I'm able to do work.
And it's important because I didn't know I was going to write a book about sobriety, for example.
I had zero idea.
But that book.
Has opened up opportunities for me.
And how did it get started?
Well, I had to be sober first, right?
Right, right.
And then I had to have a platform where people even cared.
Yeah, I thought it was interesting.
One of your talks I was listening to, like, people ask me who I am.
I'm just a sober guy.
Yeah.
I thought that was pretty funny.
Yeah.
And these things, they just keep coming together.
I can build the platform because I'm not out being drunk all the time.
And people care about the platform because I've done other things in my life.
And why can I do those other things in my life?
Because.
Oh, I'm not out being drunk all the time.
It all comes back to just making that correct move and looking forward.
You know, when I lost the fight, we were talking about before we started.
When I lost the fight, I lost all.
Scoot a little bit closer.
I lost all the money, all the money, you know, and it wasn't a lot of it, but I was dependent on it.
And I entered a dilemma.
The dilemma was, well, okay, I want to finish school because I wasn't done.
I took time off when that happened.
And I entered, I'm like, I need to go back to school.
But I need to make enough money to pay my rent and I need enough time to go to school.
So I can't work full time and get a full time salary, but part time is not going to pay me anything.
Tried internships, no one would give me anything despite all the credentials and the military advantage, whatever.
But here I am now.
What's interesting, so I was grinding for the past two and a half years.
And in that grind, I got closer to my coach and his family.
And I also had my physics and math background.
And so, my coach's wife says, if he can tutor math and physics, we might have something for him at the high school she was a guidance counselor at.
And I said, Well, that's all I can tutor, man.
I don't know anything else at this point.
And so, at that point, I'm able to take on clients at 35, then 40, then 45, then 50.
I had to start raising my price because no one else could do it.
It's the only way to scale it, yeah.
Normally, there are lots of tutors for lots of things.
Right.
But the people who can do the math and the physics, you know, most of them have jobs.
So, this is this weird kind of opening gap.
And it's the hardest subject for kids to pick up.
So, everyone needs help.
And then they're in the right environment to be able to afford the prices that'll keep me eating and living.
But how did that start?
I had an out.
Now, you can get yourself into a bad situation.
But if you've been taking the correct steps before, it's easier to survive.
If I had just, imagine if I had just been boxing, doing nothing else with my life, just partying, being a fool after every fight.
And then I lose anyway.
Now I ain't got that many options to recover, to go forward.
Then I just go back to doing whatever.
Maybe he was.
I actually took a job, right?
Because all I knew was a job, right?
This whole like working for myself thing, that experience of losing that fight, that was my baptism by fire.
Like, I had to learn how to make money.
Like, because prior to that experience, I was just used to people giving me money for my time slash service.
I didn't understand the concept of value generation and value acquisition and exchange.
I took a job before I started tutoring where I was delivering packages for Amazon.
And every time I'm in a nice neighborhood, because that's what it was, we go to the facility, they load up the truck.
We had to be at the facility by 5 a.m., and then they didn't want us on the road after sundown.
And I used to think that was because they cared about us.
And now I know it's just because they didn't want a lawsuit.
And I'll get to why I know that in just a moment.
But I do this, and they give me a route.
They said, This is the part of the city you're in, go for it.
And it was always a really nice neighborhood.
And now, every time I drive through a nice neighborhood, I don't think I want to live there.
I don't think, oh, this is an ambition.
Like, this is a driving force.
I think I get cold, man, because I lost a fight in September.
Oh.
And then the money ran out, and then I got the job in December because it was the holidays.
Everyone, they always look, man, anyone listening, if you need a quick hustle and you're in the city, Amazon is always looking for people.
And there's tons of shifts because people are buying more and they're selling more stuff, they need more bodies.
And I was one of those bodies, and I did that, and I got, I mean, I just think cold.
I'm like, woo.
And I go, man, I'm so happy that I'm not there anymore.
But how do I know that they just want to avoid a lawsuit and that limitation on the hours to work?
How do I know that's not an altruistic thing?
So I was delivering packages one day.
This was my last day, by the way.
I was delivering packages one day, and I get out, and the car, there was a malfunction, and the transmission gives in.
Rolls down the hill.
Thank goodness it was like 6 30 in the morning and no one was outside.
I actually rolled into someone's garage, like the outer part of the garage.
So everyone was all good.
Yeah.
And what did they do?
They sent another driver out.
I was like, oh man, they're going to rescue me.
They'll be like, all right, get your packages and load them into this truck.
We got to finish this route.
I'm like, hold up.
Y'all don't want to know if I was drinking?
Like, no, because that's what's supposed to happen on any type of accident involving vehicles on top.
They're supposed to make sure you're not.
Drinking and talks you like right there.
No, we right on the road start delivering stuff and then we finish it.
And this is when I was like, Okay, this is unacceptable.
I got to do something else.
Uh, I had to just listen to this woman all day.
Climbing Your Own Mountain00:04:26
Just you ever, you ever know, you know, those people that just everything is like, I wish they would, and then they do it and nothing happens.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was that kind of thing.
It was like, you know, they complain about the route.
She's talking about she's gonna quit this, that, the other.
And I got a feeling about halfway through, I was like, This is every day.
So they gave me the day off the next day.
And then they said, Are you going to come in?
It was like, You know what?
This is it for me, man.
It was only like $11 an hour.
I said, I'll figure this out.
I don't know how I'm going to figure it out, but at that point, I knew I had to.
So that's how you kind of get it.
Was this in Pittsburgh?
This was in Pittsburgh.
Wow.
And then, you know, my life always flashes before my eyes when I think about it.
Because I think, what if I had been like right behind that van?
Or what if there had been some people out or something like that?
And I just go, you know what?
I'm not going to ignore it.
Like, I'm a big believer, I guess.
I have a moderate level of belief in the idea that there are signs from the universe.
And maybe those signs aren't forward acting.
It's not like someone's saying, do this, do this.
No, it's like, okay, here's what happened.
You got a choice now.
And if you make the right choice, this ain't going to happen again.
If you make the wrong choice, not only is this probably going to happen again, but it's probably going to happen worse or at least exact a steeper toll from you if you don't.
Do it because what do they say?
You know, if you don't learn a lesson, you're just going to keep getting the test over and over again until you learn the lesson.
Right.
And as long as you don't learn it, you can't graduate to the next level.
So I think I learned the lesson.
I loved the analogy you made on that one talk that you did about the mountain climber.
Don't worry about being, don't be the mountain.
You want to be the mountain climber.
Oh, yeah.
That really inspired me.
I liked that one.
Can you explain it?
Can you explain that one?
Oh, for sure.
You know, I think a lot of times people let things just happen to them as opposed to making things happen.
It's the whole, are you a subject or an object?
Or my favorite way to put it, if you've ever seen The Departed at the beginning, when Jack Nicholas is like, everyone says, you know, you're going to be a product of your environment, but I want my environment to be a product of me.
And that, I mean, first of all, I love that movie in general.
But that is one of those things that just really sticks for you.
That idea that you're not a passive kind of participant or just a passive thing in life.
You're an active participant.
And that was the whole idea behind the mountain versus the mountain climber.
The mountain is passive.
People climb the mountain.
The mountain is, you know, it is what it is, man.
Wherever the mountain is, he's stuck too.
But the mountain climber can move, he can go up.
But what's the trade off?
Is that when you climb a mountain, that's a lot of work.
There's a lot of risk involved.
You can fall.
You can get lost.
People die climbing mountains all the time.
But when you get to the top, you've done a thing that a lot of people won't ever do.
They won't even try it, many of them.
They're terrified.
And the ones who do try, they fail for many reasons, many of which, not all, but many of which are due to.
Their own decisions.
You know, sometimes you get a lucky, you put your foot in a cobra hole, and that's it, right?
It ain't always that way, but sometimes I'm like, there you go, right?
But barring things that you can't control, you know, when you maximize control over the things you have the ability to affect and you get to the top of the mountain, you've done a really powerful thing for yourself and for how you see the world.
And I think if people do more things that are difficult or challenging, they push themselves through it.
Was there a time where you felt you were at the peak, you were at the summit of a mountain, and you were really riding high?
Navigating Promoters and Managers00:15:31
Oh, yeah.
Was that with boxing?
It was with boxing and making money online.
Those are the two big examples recently.
Well, boxing, you get humbled.
And you get humbled hard, too.
You don't just kind of get humbled, right?
Everyone, those.
That negative feedback loop pushes you down quick.
And it pushed me.
I went from being a guy who was like a social media person on there for all my boxing and talking about stuff to a dude delivering packages with Amazon.
Like, that is, I mean, you want to talk about humiliating.
And then before that, right?
Before delivering the packages, I was actually working in the warehouse.
Right.
Right.
So I'm just kind of like laying low, hoping no one recognizes me.
Well, don't talk about the losers of grandeur, right?
Hope no one recognizes me, right?
Yeah.
No one cares.
You know, everyone's there for their own things.
Not like anyone.
But that is a great example of getting dragged.
And you think you're doing well and you get knocked down.
Well, what are you going to do?
You're going to get back up?
You got to figure out a way to survive?
You're just going to take that.
Right?
I think a lot of people in that situation, and I've seen it, they take that.
I was like, this is not good.
I got to get out of here.
Same with, you know, I think when I was in school, I was doing really well.
I was doing so well and I was so close that I said, I'm going to take four higher level classes at once.
It's the last four classes I need to graduate.
It was, what was it?
Mechanics, electromagnetism, solid state physics, and thermodynamics.
I took all of them at the same time, and I just it was killing me.
And I said, Okay, but I'm gonna figure this out, right?
Because no one ever admits to themselves how bad it is until they can't, and then some people deny it, other people go, Oh, gotta do something.
Well, the reports came out, and they were like, Yo, you're fouling all your classes, right?
Teacher call, like professors that have been following me and talking to me, call me, and they're like, Is anything okay?
Is everything okay?
Whatever, yeah.
And finally, I had to look in the mirror and go, you know what?
I can't do this.
Let me stop.
And I went and told my advisor, and she's like, you know, when you told me you wanted to do this, I didn't think you were going to be able to succeed.
I was like, so why'd you let me do it?
She goes, well, I'll try to be supportive and encouraging.
And now you know.
And plus, now we got some feedback on how it can work and all that.
But I got dragged and I finished it.
I mean, talking about hustle and really busting my ass.
But I got in there and I finished the two classes I kept with a C, and I was like, wow.
That's really, that drags you because now, you know, I have those C's and I have no desire to go to grad school, but like I go, okay, humbled and dragged, humbled and dragged.
You make a lot of money and then your next sale, no one buys anything.
You think that's happened?
I mean, I remember the first time I made five figures in a month and I said, oh, I'm the man, right?
Let me just do this again the same way.
And I try and I barely crack four.
And then you're like, you feel sick.
You wonder what happened.
You wonder what did.
And then I start asking that I get luckier, am I just bad?
And you start questioning yourself.
But on a lot of guys, they don't move forward.
They don't seek outside help.
I think that's like the biggest issue there, too, right?
Like back to the mountain climber analogy if you're climbing a mountain and your gear is busted, there's a hole in your parka, man, you're about to die, you're out of food.
And another guy comes by looking all shiny and clean.
And he's like, hey, man, do you need some help?
If your prod says, No, I'm good.
Meanwhile, you like bleeding out of your ass.
It's just a matter of time.
You know, whatever.
The help was offered and you passed and now suffer.
But if you go, Dude, I am in bad shape.
Help me.
Right.
And I try to do that whenever I can now because the more times you ride high and get knocked down and it happens, no matter what.
Because I'm sure something great is going to happen again.
I'm going to feel like I'm king of the world.
I'm going to get knocked down.
You know what the difference between now, though, when it happens as an adult with some experience with this cycle versus being a teenager or not even a teenager, just a younger adult is that now I don't boast, brag, whatever.
I just kind of go, ooh, looking kind of nice today.
Let's hope this continues and go away.
But, like, you know, one of the things I did, you know, when I fought on TV, I went and told everybody, and then I just kept telling them over text, over social media, whatever.
And then you lose in front of the whole world in a really embarrassing fashion.
And that flips the script entirely.
Because, look, if you hadn't done that, if I hadn't told everyone, realistically, most people wouldn't have known, right?
Like, no, I would love to think everyone, you know, is tuning in, but realistically, most people wouldn't know.
So I brought all that pressure on.
And now it's like, oh, I got to deal with that.
I got to deal with how I feel about it.
You know, fortunately, I wrote in an article, you know, eight things I learned losing on TV.
And one of the things I said was that heaven and hell are like analogous to what happens when life is going good and life is going poorly.
And when life is going poorly, you get the type of attention and energy you put out into the universe when things were going well.
Yeah, if you want to take that even less abstract, how you treat people when you don't have to treat them well is how they're going to treat you when you are well.
And so, and because I'm a big guy on like support, positivity, giving back, very grateful for everything in my life, you know, I didn't have a bunch of people, you know, killing me.
If you watch the social media comments after some of these guys who lose when they're real a-holes, oh man, it shows you people may act nice.
But the reality is, if you cross, you don't even have to cross somebody.
If they just don't like you and you give them reasons to dislike you, they are gonna, they just, they're licking their chops for when things go wrong.
Oh, yeah.
When they go wrong, they're gonna remind you and they're gonna, and you'll never be able to forget.
Especially on social media, too.
You know, and I don't bring out the haters, at least not nearly as bad as anyone else on social media.
I think in terms of like controversial personalities, I'm relatively tame.
Yeah.
And let me tell you, I remember when I lost, no one on Twitter really bugged me.
Not that much.
Every now and then someone would go, oh, man, your head must still be ringing from that.
When you say when you lost, did you only lose one time?
I only lost one time as a pro.
Really?
I want to hear that story.
But professional boxing is, oh, there's so much to it.
I'll jump right into it.
So you lost like one televised match?
Yes.
Okay.
Because, you know, unless you, so everything is like, what have you done and why should we give you this thing?
Right.
If you've done well, we give you more things and we continue to see if you're worth it.
And then eventually you get to a point where they're like, okay, well, we've invested in you.
We're going to take our pound of flesh back.
Right.
And that's what a good contract does.
A good contract should have the fighter, I hate to say it like this, but this is what it is.
A good contract usually puts the fighter in a bit of an indentured server to position.
Right.
Right.
The difference being now that the fighter can walk.
Now, when the fighter walks on a contract, he can't fight for like nine to 12 months, though, they won't even let you fight.
Anyhow, really?
Oh, yeah.
Afterwards, if you walk on a contract, yeah.
Okay.
Now, if your terms are up or it's like a mutual release, you know, but a lot of times that's just put in there.
If you act like a bad person, I don't know how R rated my speech can get, but I'm just going to keep it nice and PG 13.
If you act like a really bad person, that's just a way for people to kind of protect their investment andor make your life annoying.
But so I got the contract, a professional contract, when I was, and I have to, well, we're going to break some boxing game down, right?
I don't know how much you know about boxing, but everyone's going to get a nice little.
Okay.
I know a fair share.
Nice little lesson about the business end of things.
Okay.
So there are shows and shows where fighters fight, and those shows are put on by promoters, and the fighters on those fights are managed by managers.
And for a while, you used to be able to have the manager and the promoter be the same entity.
No longer.
That's just illegal.
You can't do it anymore.
I don't remember whether I think it's part of the Muhammad Ali Act, but I'm not 100% sure.
Is there.
A specific reason for that?
Well, sure.
It creates conflict of interest.
Okay.
For you know, sometimes that's okay.
We're like, if a manager, so what happens, right?
So you have a manager and a promoter is acting as one entity, and he brings a fighter on, and he manages one fighter that's going to fight another fighter.
And the promoter knows, right?
Because how does the promoter get paid?
The promoter gets paid when the tickets are sold, and the manager just gets a cut of the winnings.
Okay.
And all.
So there is no reason if you have both of those guys work together, there's no person fighting to get the highest purse for the fighter because the promoter is always going to take a cut of the whole thing.
Okay.
That makes sense.
Right.
Yeah.
So it removes the leverage and it's really to protect the fighter.
I mean, the manager would love to be the promoter for sure.
But that's really what it comes down to is that kind of thing.
Okay.
Right.
So those are three big players the promoter who puts the fights on.
The manager who gets the fighter the fight a lot of times, or is the promoter?
Now, they figured out some kind of ways to work around this, but we'll get to that and the fighter.
Okay.
All right.
So, the fighter is always looking to get promoted by a big promoter, top rank, Golden Boy.
Those are the two guys that come up tonight.
Right now, Dazzin or Dazone, if you're familiar with any of these guys, those are the promoters.
They have these big old shows.
They have all the ones that sell the tickets, put the money up, take the risk.
And then the manager is like, we're trying to get you signed with a promoter because then a promoter is like, okay, we want you on for like, you know, three shows and we're going to make money with you and all that.
And the fighter's like, all right, well, here I am and here's a cut of my earnings.
I'm the one taking all the risk.
But there you go.
So the better you fight and the better your resume, whether it be through amateur accomplishments like a national title or an Olympic medal or whatever, the sooner you get signed by a promoter because everyone wants to get signed by a promoter because the promoter.
Now, this is changing just a little, but the promoter is the one that won their name on it and they have all the connections like the TV dates, right?
Now, TV's becoming a little obsolete because everyone's switching to apps.
The zone took a big risk and it really paid off.
They have a huge, just a huge base $9.99 a month compared to a $100 one time pay per view.
And even if you only have two pay per views, that's $200 as opposed to a A $9.99 a month thing.
And people don't think like that anyway, right?
Even they don't break the math down and go, okay, well, it makes sense.
No, all they see is it's only $9.99 a month.
Of course I get this.
Look, man, I've only watched like four of my Dizone like fights, but it's only nine a month.
I don't think about it, it just comes out of my account.
So that's what they want to get.
They want to take because they the promoters done all that work to build this platform to have these guys come and fight.
And the sooner you get that, that's everyone's goal because anyone can fight on a local show.
That's what I did.
You fight on these local shows and build up, but what's the local show limited by?
Space.
You can only get, I mean, what.
500 people, maybe, into a good venue until you start getting like MGM Grand and bigger places, which the big promoters pay for and they take the risk and put up, where you can put, you know, 10,000, 15,000 butts in the seat and you can make a lot of money.
Yeah.
So I didn't get, I just had a manager when I started.
And then that manager got me a deal with a promoter.
And my promoter then put me on all these different shows as they're moving and developing me.
Somewhat acting like a manager, but not really.
But because I've worked with a new promoter, Rock Nation Sports, and they hadn't really, they were putting on shows, but they were in the meantime developing the fighters they signed by letting them fight on other shows.
Okay.
Because the promoter doesn't always have to let you fight on someone else's show.
He's like, I paid for you.
I'm trying to invest you.
But they're doing that to develop on these local shows, smaller shows, bring the opponent in, pay the opponent, all that good stuff.
Okay.
And then they have a TV date.
So that's how you get on TV.
Without a TV date, without.
Look, without a TV date or the internet now with Dazzy, you got no chance.
You'll be fighting for peanuts for your entire career because there's just no way to make more money.
And it's crazy when you talk to some fighters who don't understand this.
Little did this, what I just broke down, who don't understand this.
They complain to a local promoter.
I have a buddy that's a local promoter.
He tells me all the time, he goes, These guys, they want more money all the time.
And I'm like, Well, there's a very much a cap on how much money you can give them.
And they don't understand that.
So that's how that goes the manager, promoter, and the fighter.
Right.
And so everyone's dream is to get a promoter with TV dates and a bigger reach or access to bigger venues because that's where the money is, at least in America.
In Europe, it's a bit different.
Yeah.
But in Europe, they're not competing with the NFL, the NHL, the MLB, and the NBA, the big four.
So fighting is still, the fighting is just received better.
There's more money.
There are more people who watch it.
Yeah.
It's on more networks.
Way more.
Yeah.
And also, this is really awesome too.
The United States, people go, oh, man, why are we sucking boxing in the Olympics all of a sudden?
Well, we're competing against countries where, one, the best athletes aren't being taken to the gridiron or the basketball court, for example, and they also pay for the coaching, the fighting systems, or not the fighting system, the sports are subsidized by the government.
So, you know, the story about Gennady Golovkin.
He is a great fighter out of his country.
I think Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan.
It's one or the other.
So, you know, people who watch it don't know.
The Golovkin Story00:07:50
Yeah.
He's wrong.
And great fighter does all these things.
I think he won a medal.
I'm not sure.
But he wants to go pro and he wants to fight in America.
And so, normally, when that happens in America, a fighter stays with the same coach from amateur to professional because that makes sense.
He put that time and that investment.
He trained the kid when the kid was not even capable of earning.
He wants to stay and now he earns and now he gets a cut.
Well, not so much in these places where the coach is paid.
So he's like, Well, I'm not leaving.
I have a great thing here.
Are you kidding?
Yeah, I produced you.
Right.
I'm not going to pay me more now.
Why would I leave?
So he's got another coach.
And I think his coach is the guy named Abel Sanchez out of California.
Really?
And Abel didn't train him as an amateur.
Abel just got him when he was a pro.
Wow.
And that's why.
Because, and a lot of these guys, when out of these other countries, man, they do well because they they they have they take care of the fighters when they train, and that's really important.
Because, unlike professionals, amateurs don't earn any money, right?
So, they got to do something to earn money, and that something, assuming it's legal, that something takes time away from I mean, even if it's illegal, right?
Uh, takes time away from training.
Right.
But they don't have that issue in other countries.
So they're just walking into a very competitive situation.
Wow.
I had no idea that the sport was subsidized in countries like that.
If you look, I mean, I think the United States.
We don't do that with any sports here, do we?
No.
Well, okay.
Well, do we?
For Olympic level sports, no.
But look at the way we do our football and our baseball.
We don't call it subsidizing the sport.
What we do is we call it a scholarship.
All right, for college.
Yeah, and now the NCAA has ruled.
Dude, I can't.
Oh, in California, right?
Now they can pay college.
Oh, my God.
And now Florida is proposing the same legislation.
Really?
Which is a big deal because when California did it, the NCAA was like, okay, you're big California, but we're not going to allow you to participate if you do this.
And they did it.
So now that's what they were doing.
If Florida comes on board, now they have a hard decision because those are two.
Really big, a lot of powerhouse schools in both places.
And then after that, it's only a matter of time.
Texas is probably going to follow suit.
Oh, for sure.
And then the NCAA is going to be forced to make a very big choice, but they won't need.
What are you going to do?
You're going to block out the big buyers or the big schools?
And they're doing it in such a way that the coaches don't have to feel threatened because they're not saying you're going to pay the students.
What they're saying is they can make money off of their likeness.
Right.
And that's a really big deal.
Oh, is that what it is?
Mm hmm.
Okay, so the colleges aren't paying them.
They're not going to pay them.
Even though they make so much advertising money off them, it's ridiculous.
Crazy.
So this is nuts, right?
As an athlete, well, we're going to use football.
So when I say this, anyone listening, I'm talking about NCAA football.
I don't know how it works for anyone else, but I know that football brings in the most money.
So this is the most relevant.
If you're a big time player, you're not allowed to work.
And you're not allowed to take money.
Right.
So, how are you supposed to get money?
Well, the school is supposed to cover you.
Okay.
And that's kind of cool.
But look at how much money the schools make off of a player that gets big time.
Oh, it's insane.
Even a player gets small time.
I spoke at the University of South Carolina this year.
And one of the things they were telling me, guys, just took a tour at a school.
I spoke to the football team and took a tour at the facilities and everything.
He was saying, like, these guys are like rock stars because of the internet.
Guys have three posts and 50,000 followers.
Yeah.
Because everyone just goes, they just go and look at the website and see the roster and load them up.
And then, but we're all saying the other big issue is everything comes with a price, right?
Right.
The other big issue is that these guys, they can't because they're teenagers.
They don't have the discipline to be like, I'm going to ignore those comments.
It's already hard enough for adults.
Oh, yes.
Oh, some guys in the NBA still can't even hold back on getting it.
Right.
And so you expect an 18, 19 year old kid with all this attention to ignore that.
But yeah, so that's the big deal now.
And that's what annoys me about football fans in general.
They'll always complain.
Like, I'm mainly the old white guys.
They'll be like, oh, these fucking guys can't keep their mouth shut.
They just fucking spat.
These guys are millionaires, but they're idiots.
Like, Dude, this guy's 20 years old, and people forget that, right?
Because we correlate a lot of a thing with time and experience, right?
And they have the experience, right?
Absolutely, and they have the time invested in such a small amount of space, yeah.
I mean, most people are never going to get to the point in their career where they're capable of earning seven figures, right?
In a single calendar year, yeah.
But if you can do that as an athlete, yeah, of course, people are gonna look and they're gonna go.
Well, why can't you stop smoking weed?
Right, right, right.
Yeah, that was a big deal with the Steelers, right?
They caught him in the city, Le'Veon Bell at the airport.
Yeah, and then scared off the weed, Steven Ace.
And so it's funny on the one end, like you're like, okay, dude, clearly you're an a hole, you can't stop smoking weed.
On the other hand, you got to remember you're talking to a 22 year old, exactly.
He just happens to be famous and right, you know.
No one gives it, think of it this way think about rock stars.
Same thing.
Oh, yeah.
The difference is they're rock stars.
Right.
They're allowed to do cocaine and smoke weed and smoke crack, whatever they want.
When I was at the height of my training, I said, in the next life, I'm going to be a rock star.
I'm not going to be.
I'm going to be Rick James.
I'm right.
I'm not going to be an athlete because being an athlete is like Adam and Eve and Apple.
You get this nice garden, you get all this stuff, and there's that apple.
And that apple is drinking.
Yeah.
Heavy.
Stand out all night, partying with fans.
Yeah.
People who want to buy you stuff.
Girls who don't even care if you learn their name.
Yeah.
And God, the person who gives you your athletic ability and all this talent.
Yeah.
He goes, You can have anything in the garden.
Just don't eat the apple.
That's all you got to do.
And you can stay.
And what do you do?
What's the first thing you want that apple?
Oh my god, there's carrots, there's pears.
He, you could kill the animals if you figure out fire and you eat that apple.
You know, he's like, Hey man, that's it, you gotta go.
So, it's I'm really looking forward to how that changes the athletic landscape.
Oh, for sure.
Because at the end of the day, and here's the other thing too when people argue back and they go, Well, we're giving them scholarships.
We're giving them scholarships.
Of course, that's great.
And I'm like, have you been to a, have you seen what these guys major in?
Yeah, right.
Guilt and Growing Up00:15:34
Like, they're not.
Yeah, no, it's.
I'm actually laughing.
I don't know why they don't.
They're not taking the education seriously.
Right.
Not only are they not majoring in anything useful, what they are studying, they're not taking it seriously.
And on top of that, the school is more interested in the money.
Exactly.
So, what are they going to do?
They're not going to flunk them out of class.
Right.
When's the last time you heard of somebody?
Never.
You know, academic probation.
And he didn't play on Sunday or something.
That doesn't happen.
Now, if you can't do anything, you just taking up space.
Yeah, yeah.
That's how it is, man.
The other thing is, like, when I was that age, I can't remember how much of a dumbass I was when I was that age.
When I was that young, like in my late teens, early 20s, and then imagine just having that massive microscope on you with millions of people watching you every moment, scoping in on everything you post on social media, all the comments.
And then on top of that, give some young, you know, ignorant, cocky kid millions of dollars.
That's going to fuck them up even worse mentally.
You know what I mean?
It's going to ruin them.
Yeah.
Check this out.
I learned, I'm, I'm, I would like to think at this point in my life, I am above average at managing money.
And I say above average because now my money does not just, I'm way past blowing it, but it doesn't just sit in my bank account either.
I like to put it in a place where it can do a thing for me, right?
I'm not like up to investing in stocks.
Yeah.
But I try to use my money and let it go.
What do you do?
You got real estate?
No.
Well, so I guess it technically, I have Acorn, right?
Acorn takes.
25 out of my account and put to someplace.
And I checked it.
It had been doing it for a year.
I was like, wow, I think I made like 40 bucks off of this.
It's not a lot.
Yeah.
But it beat inflation.
Yeah.
So it was kind of cool, right?
That is cool.
So I'm above average.
Hell yeah.
When I was 18, my dad died.
When he died, his life insurance gave me $55,000.
What?
I didn't even, and it gave me, not my mom, the whole thing.
It gave me because I was an adult at 18.
In 18 months, I was overdrawing the account and sleeping on my aunt's floor.
And, dude, when I look at what I have to show for it, it's not like I had a.
I mean, I bought myself a chain and some stupid clothes, a lot of fast food.
I didn't even drink that.
I mean, nah.
I mean, I, because I was in college, I was drinking other people's alcohol.
Yeah.
I look at, I was buying fast food, man, a Chinese food place.
They knew me by first name, Domino's, all that good stuff.
Spending, I had no concept of like, What made sense to buy, what did not make sense to buy, where to put money.
And so that's me from the type of environment that a lot of these guys are from.
And I got all I got, all relative to like an NFL contract was 55K.
And I couldn't even hold on to it for 18 months.
I mean, that's what happened.
God damn.
Look, it's funny in retrospect.
What a lesson.
That was an expensive lesson in money management.
Damn.
In retrospect, hilarious.
Like, oh man, look at 18 year old me.
I can't figure it out.
Meanwhile, I remember when I was 19, I was living on my aunt's floor, sleeping on it because she already had a bunch of people living with her.
I wasn't going back home at all.
Not because of shame or anything.
Whose floor did you say you were living on?
My aunt's.
Your aunt?
Okay.
You weren't getting along with your mom or what?
Oh, no, no.
We weren't.
I mean, that's another story in itself why we weren't getting along.
We can touch on that too because that's probably.
Some very powerful lessons about forgiveness in there.
But when I'm doing that, and I need to eat during the day, during the evening, I would just go over to this girl's house I was dating.
I mastered the art of being a hobo sexual.
That's what he is.
He's a hobo sexual.
You get your girlfriend or your girlfriend's parents to feed you, you can be all right if you run that game.
But during the day, I had to eat something.
I had a list of CVSs and Rite Aids I would.
Go in, and I figured out how to slide some Pringles.
That's what I used to take.
I used to steal Pringles and some, I think it was like Fago Pop, right?
And I would put that in my pocket, and that's what I would eat during that day.
Damn.
And I was really good at it.
I knew the camera angles, everything, man.
And yeah, you got to survive.
Look, it was either that or not eat.
Right.
Now that I'm like, what's funny, now I'm real big into intermittent fasting.
You could have just fasted the whole time.
You could have just fasted before.
I remember one day, my friend of mine was like, yo, is that homeless?
Because I was like wearing the same thing for days.
The facial hair I had at 19 was broken out, man.
I looked rough.
But lessons you learn.
Yeah.
Hard lessons, fun lessons.
A thing I will never do again.
Not only will I never do it again, but I'll never have a relationship with my children when I have them where they don't think they can come home and they don't feel comfortable.
Because it's just a rough time.
My mom, you know, I wrote about this to my email list.
I just told her my story, and she was like, I don't know why you wouldn't come home.
And I'm like, Yes, you do.
And it's crazy.
I had a lot of issues with my mom.
Some of them was just my personality and why it happened.
And how it happened, you clash with another personality.
But a lot of it is so my mom was not mature at all.
Emotionally, mentally, I think.
I mean, physically, she was in the go and had me.
So, by definition, right?
Mature there.
But I'll never forget when I was 11.
The 11 years old is when I realized I was going to have to take care of myself because she gets drunk and gets into a fight with this woman in the street.
And I remember standing between her and the door saying, Don't go outside.
Like, just stay in here.
She doesn't listen and goes and gets arrested.
And we have to deal with that.
And at that point, I was like, Should have been arrested.
Yeah.
Should beat the lady's ass or what?
Oh, yeah.
And then in retaliation, we woke up to all this garbage dumped on our porch.
It was ridiculous.
Oh, my God.
And then we had to do it with the kid, you know, and then we had to do it with her kids, you know, trying to fight us.
It was stupid, man.
But like, I remember going, this is the.
I was, I was, even at 11, I had enough wherewithal to understand what the dynamic between a parent and a child should be.
And I said, you, you and your lack of discipline, you, you abandon us.
And that's what I felt.
And then that, that was the tipping, not the tipping point, but that was really a starter rape.
I didn't realize how badly, how poorly behind, how far behind I was.
Until I got to high school, and I had the really fortune.
I had the fortune of just we live in something called a magnet system.
I don't know if they have something like that here, but if you apply and you meet the criteria, you can go to any high school that is not your region's high school that will feed you in within the city.
And I had enough sense to know I cannot continue to go to school in this area because I'll either end up becoming a kingpin or a killer.
But no situation is going to turn out well for me if I continue going here.
So I got to go to this other school.
And for the first time, it was the first time I'd ever been in a home where like a husband and wife lived and raised kids and they had a house and it was out the projects.
I mean, I was like, I was floored.
And what happened is that over time, watching how my mom continued to behave and the options that I was given, or I felt like I didn't get, and it's true, I didn't get a lot of options and nothing, I mean, literally nothing.
Yeah.
I think about.
That I was exposed to.
I mean, we always had like food for the most part, right?
But never the ability to explore anything besides, you know, go to school, come back, go to school, come back.
I was like, this is messed up.
And I just got angrier, angrier.
And then I thought about a lot of other stuff too, where I felt like the ball was dropped.
You know, some people that we were around growing up, like one of the articles I was talking to you about, like being raised by crackheads that really, well, you know, she wasn't a crackhead, but we were babysat by crackheads and around them.
You said you mentioned to me that you knew what crack smoke smelled like and you were like sick of it or something.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, you see these things and you don't think anything of them until you see how.
It could and should be right when I was there.
I was just like, okay, everybody's messed up, whatever, right?
Everyone, you have to fight all the time, right?
And I felt like because, like, and I and then I had a friend where I got to see like what his mom did, you know, getting out and working hard.
And it just made me so angry one day to think about a lot of the abuse that ended up suffering and dealing with.
And so I said, There's no way I'm going to go back, I'm not going to get along there.
We have a very different way of seeing things.
I have a very I'm really good about dealing with the future, or at least better, and continue to try and get better.
And she isn't very much instant gratification, very much, very emotional.
And so I left and I spent time being very angry.
And then one day I figured out, and it was affecting how I would deal with her when I saw her.
So you went like on your own, you moved away.
Oh, yeah.
You know, since I was 18, I've moved home one time because I needed to go home.
And I just, I hit it, it was a rock bottom point, like we talked about.
And it only lasted four months because right around month three, or maybe month two, I was like, This is a problem.
I will suffer out there.
I'm going to suffer no matter what, basically, is what I thought.
I said, well, let's suffer in a way that hopefully builds some character and doesn't have me think about doing something crazy.
But I got tired of being angry.
I got tired of being angry.
And it wasn't consistent with the way my kind of philosophy about the world was developing, which is very much the responsibility for how you feel in your environment and how you think about things.
So, I was like, I started to dive into forgiveness and forgiveness.
And now it is very much, if you want to talk about my spiritual system, it's all based on forgiveness.
The book, A Course in Miracles, whenever people ask me, like, oh, what book should I read?
What's your book recommendation?
I have three books The Tower of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee for your body, The Art of Learning for your mind, and A Course in Miracles for your heart.
Course in Miracles?
The Course in Miracles.
And it may, I mean, the whole premise.
I won't get into the whole premise.
It's kind of kooky.
But the basic idea is that forgiveness is the only way you can ever be at peace.
Right.
But forgiveness is an act.
It's not a thing you just, well, I'm going to be forgiven.
Nope.
No, you have to work at it.
And there's a way to work at it.
And it really, very much influenced how I was able to work through a lot of problems.
How, like, now when I look back at some of my behavior when I was drinking, how that affected things.
Because when you stop drinking and you look back at yourself when you're sober, You're a holy hell.
That guy was a problem.
And you feel bad.
You feel bad about the way you talked, the way you treated some of the things you did, the risks you took, the lives you put in danger, the people you annoyed, the friendships you strained, all of that.
You feel bad about all of it.
And I don't have those moments that much anymore.
But when I first stopped drinking, I would have a lot of them.
Okay.
But I dealt with them by forgiveness.
I had to learn to forgive myself.
I always say you got to forgive three things to be at peace you got to forgive yourself, you got to forgive the world.
You got to forgive the people who wronged you.
It's easy to complain that the world is one way.
I understand what you say about people that wronged you, but what do you mean about forgiving yourself?
Like, what do you mean by that?
Okay.
So, we think, I think a lot of times we feel guilty.
This is my idea about guilt, and I may or may not have got this from the book.
Like, guilty, right?
Like, I didn't go to the gym today.
I feel guilty about that, or I went out and got fucked up last night.
Right.
Now, I think that's a general state of disappointment, but when I talk about guilt, I think we feel guilty about a thing that we've done something and we think we got away with it.
We think we got the benefit without paying the cost.
Got it.
Right?
It's why, you know, you talk about like people who turn themselves in for crimes.
They do it because I really think there's a part of the population and probably a significant part, it might be part of being human, that we don't do well when, well, we know that equality is kind of an illusion and we know that there should, but we do know that fairness is not.
I think intuitively and internally, we know that.
For X, there should be some kind of minus X ish response.
And if you get the X, you feel guilty.
Right.
You want to talk about even at the.
I don't think you feel guilty so much for missing the gym as you do for not having your physique immediately go to shit, right?
Not like whenever you miss the gym and you immediately got, you know, you put on 10 pounds and your guts are hanging out, you're going to feel, you're like, okay, that's what was supposed to happen.
Yeah.
Right.
But if that doesn't, then you feel bad.
And then it keeps going, and you're like, oh, man, well, I know.
And then eventually you either start going to the gym or you accept the new state of things.
Right.
Because your mind can't reconcile.
Now, on the flip side, you would know something's really wrong.
If you were pounding it out every day in the gym, but nothing was happening, there was no Muslim.
And that's another issue, right?
Right.
But the whole guilt thing comes when we think we've done something wrong and we have not, or we think we got some benefit.
Without putting in the work to get it.
Without putting in the work, or we acquired it in a moral way.
And I don't like the word immoral.
Something more quantitative.
We acquired it in a way where the other people didn't know that they had to pay for it.
Right.
Okay.
Which is why lying makes us feel guilty.
We got away with it.
We didn't have to deal with the conflict, but now the other person kind of has to bear the weight of the cost.
Somebody else suffered.
Right.
They have to pay.
And so.
You forgive yourself.
Like, for me, he's a perfect example in my life.
I think about all the times I drove drunk.
No one died, sure.
But the risk was there.
And I'm a really big person about risk.
Maybe if I had a more deterministic mindset and I didn't think about the probabilities, maybe it'd bother me.
But I'm very aware of the probability.
I talk about it all the time.
I stopped drinking before the law of large numbers caught up with me, which is the whole idea.
The more times you flip a coin, Right.
Owning Your Mistakes00:08:47
Yeah.
The more, the closer it should get to one half, which is what we expect.
You know, half the time heads tell.
But if you flip it 10 times, it could be like you could realistically get 10 heads in a row.
Right.
But the larger the number of trials gets, the closer you trend to what the expected average should be.
Right.
So, like blackjack.
Right.
You could, that's why the casino always wins.
Yeah.
That's right.
The house always wins.
Right.
So, that's true.
If, if I think about this and I go, I beat the law of large numbers.
Right.
That, that, Or I stopped playing before the law, large numbers beats me is a better way to look at it.
That makes me feel guilty because I know there are some people, I talked to some guys, they got four DUIs, and I'm like, How do you get four, man?
Shit, I've been pulled over four times and got out of it.
You got four?
How'd that happen?
Right?
And I drink 10 times more than you do.
Exactly.
All it is is the coin land in some way.
And when you look at it that way, you can feel bad.
You know?
Or you steal something and no one realizes everyone's pointing the blame or somebody else doesn't and they take the cost and you're aware of it.
It's going to make you feel guilty.
So, how do you forgive yourself for something like that?
I think the first thing you have to do is one.
It's going to be maybe not what you expected.
First thing you got to do is realize that it's in the past.
I think we hold grudges and we have difficulty forgiving when we think, well, because we think that our emotions are going to somehow change.
If we get angry enough or sad enough, the causality will be reversed and we can go and make it right.
Yeah.
Doesn't happen.
Right.
That's why we think revenge.
Is going to balance the scale, right?
But then you can get your revenge.
You go, Huh, well, that didn't undo it, and I still feel like shit.
And on top of that, I feel even worse now that I did something to somebody and affected a bunch of other lives who had nothing to do with it.
That's how it goes, though, right?
So, the first step, though, is to just understand it's in the past and there's nothing you can do about it.
At the same time, you can own that you had something to do with it.
And the third way is to remember.
And this is the hardest thing for most people.
This is the hard step that a lot of people follow me on the first one.
They follow me on the second one.
The third one is where they go, Not sure, man.
You sound like you're going to crack.
The third step is you have to remember that no matter what, you did the thing and the other person did the thing, or to you, or you did the thing, because you were chasing what you believed was the best way to get feeling.
You thought it was the best way to feel fun.
The other person thought it was the best way to alleviate something.
And that's how you can.
Be forgiven.
That's how you can forgive someone else.
Because look, if someone, the thing about the worst thing that happened to me, it's been a long time, someone did something foul to me.
Let's say, like, my girlfriend cheated on me or something.
Okay.
The first response is to be angry, is to hold a grudge, someone to do something bad.
But I have to forgive her.
And then remember, forgiveness, I always have to say this forgiveness doesn't substitute justice.
I still got to break up with her.
Right?
Yeah.
If someone kills my family, look, man, they still got to go to jail.
Forgiveness is the forgiveness.
To keep me from dealing with that emotional burden and perhaps doing something destructive to myself because I think I can fix it, right?
That's what forgiveness is.
So, with that caveat out the way, I have to look at that going back to the girlfriend cheating example or even a family killing example somebody killing a family member of yours.
That's a relevant thing in the media today that just happened.
But they did it because they thought that it was going to bring them closer to peace for one way or the other.
And in doing so, their actions are no different than my actions.
And so I can take that and emotionally wrap my mind around it.
That does not excuse the action.
That does not mean I'm going to be cool with them.
That doesn't mean any of that.
You forgive a person so you don't carry that emotional burden yourself.
So you don't have to suffer.
Right.
That's it.
Perfect.
Right.
Because that's the idea.
No one suffers but you when you hold a grudge.
Right.
What is that old saying?
It's like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die or something like that.
That is so spot on.
And if you get that, then you can easily forgive.
But that's the hard part.
That is the hardest step for many people to get to.
Yeah, that's strong, man.
That's really strong.
I think that's important for a lot of people to understand.
Be able to understand that to experience.
You got to experience things like that where people really fuck you over or you fuck somebody else over.
You know what I mean?
Where two people can come together and forgive each other or, you know, like you said.
And I think, like, you know, what you said is another part, I think, of development.
It'd be nice.
I think we all would like to fashion ourselves as the hero in our story.
We go through life and the whole time.
Only, we are the only people who suffer wrong.
We never do any wrong.
It's not true.
And owning that, I think, brings you a lot of peace because it forces you to take a process that you normally extend to other people, other things, forgiveness, and it forces you to apply it to yourself.
I talked to a friend of mine that had dealt with some trauma, female.
This is important for the story.
I dealt with some trauma, and she had trouble.
She could forgive her attacker.
She had trouble, so much trouble forgiving herself.
She thought, okay, if I hadn't said this or did this or been in that position, this would not have happened.
If I had been stronger, if I had resisted, this would not have happened.
And in her mind, she can wrap herself around the idea that a person is evil and victimized, and she can forgive that.
Your own hangups will determine what you can or cannot forgive.
Where you have trouble.
Because she can't wrap her mind around the idea that she made a mistake.
She just made an error in judgment.
She missed the bad guy.
It happens.
People can't, people have a hard time forgiving themselves.
I think they have a way harder time forgiving themselves than they do other people.
I really believe that a person can forgive the killer.
Let's say someone killed the kid or something.
This is an extreme.
But I think that people would have a harder time forgiving themselves for allowing it to happen.
And I don't even like using the verb allow, but I think that's the best word I have to describe that kind of action, right?
For letting it happen, allowing it to happen, than they would for somebody taking advantage and being and exacting such a cruel, cruel action on them.
Yeah.
I mean, I can't imagine something that extreme, someone killing someone really close to you and, and, Feeling that hatred towards that person nonstop every day.
I mean, it's just exhausting.
It demolishes you.
It would.
But it's also extremely hard to get over that wall to be able just to let go.
Yeah.
And I never say it should be easy.
But sometimes people don't think about it that way.
They think they just do whatever is instant gratification.
Not only that, but they can't see a reason.
People.
You have to take your inner peace and your wellness seriously.
Yeah, for sure.
And that's just what it comes down to if you follow it logically, you end up in the same place as you would if you follow it emotionally or rationally, I guess.
If you follow it rationally, you'll end up in the same place you will if you follow it emotionally, which is the other person does not experience what you continue to beat yourself up for.
So, you have to do something about that.
And the premise that I follow is what you do about that is forgiveness.
And forgiveness is not a substitute for justice, justice still has to be done.
Finding Peace on Instagram00:12:35
I'm a big believer in that.
I'm the God that's going to be swinging the axe and taking your head off, telling you, Look, man, it's okay.
I really don't feel anything.
Hey, man, why are you cutting my head off?
No, no, no, that's not for you, right?
I don't feel anything.
I just want you to know I forgive you, you're forgiven, yeah, but you're still dead, but you still gotta go, man, like that kind of thing.
And people don't get that, and that's hard for people to reconcile too.
Is that you can exact the punishment.
You can protect yourself, but you can still forgive.
I like that.
I really like that.
And I think it's a very, very strong and deliberate way to live.
So maybe that's why people resist it because it's very deliberate.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, cool, man.
I read on your Twitter that you have some links to some books that you've written on your Twitter.
Or are they on your website?
Yeah, website and Twitter.
Okay.
Yeah.
You got like 100,000 something followers on Twitter, dude.
You're blowing up, man.
Yeah, people keep finding me.
I wonder if they're following me now because of like.
Because they see so many other people, yeah, yeah, right.
Is that oh, is that what happens when you get so many?
There's snowballs like that.
People just oh, it's not so much that it snowballs, I think it models, I think it grows exponentially.
I was gonna say models after E, but like that's just the math not nerding me.
Um, yeah, but in other words, you know, each one follower can get two people to follow, and each other can get two, so it goes one, two, four.
I think you got some big followers though, yeah, that that too.
I noticed you have Rick Rubin following you, yeah, you know, someone messaged me, was like, Yo, did you know Rick Rubin follows you?
and I said, No, let me look up who that because I'm not you didn't even know who he was.
No, man, but once I found out, I took a screenshot of it and put it on my Facebook.
That's why they were like, That's crazy.
That's really cool.
All the members of the Peterson follow family, yeah, Donald Trump Jr., Scott Adams.
Donald Trump Jr. follows you, yeah.
Holy shit, wow.
It says, you know, it's uh, I I have now I wish I could tell people I know exactly why these people like me.
I got no idea, right?
Because I'm not transmitting what I think is a Is a better than winning personality via these tweets.
But what I am putting out is my experience and I think I'm authentic.
I certainly am not false.
So these people, when they follow me, I just go, cool, man.
Like a lot of times, I wish there was a way to see how many people with a blue check mark follow me.
Because every now and then, because here's what Twitter does.
Whenever someone with a blue check mark or a high follower account, Follows you or interacts with you for your follow, interacts with you whether they like your tweet or retweet it.
Uh, you get forced notified, yeah, all right.
And so I'll get a notification, I'm like, Who is this person?
And then I look and I go, Wow, that's cool, man.
It's crazy.
All these people follow me, yeah.
Uh, what's his name?
Uh, David Aya follows me.
And if you don't know who that is, right, look, man, you're not supposed to know all these, you are, right?
Right?
He's the guy who wrote and directed training day, and oh, really, yeah, the awesome guy.
And he actually, he he bought my book.
He messed with me a few times.
He went one when he bought my book about sobriety because he talked about, I guess he had the same issues.
Okay.
Um, and bought it and resonated.
And he also goes, Oh man, no wonder about like you have the same birthday.
I was like, Oh, no.
So he wished me happy birthday on my birthday.
I was like, Oh man, cool.
Thanks.
That's crazy, man.
So yeah, you know, we live in this world where if you have, I think, a valuable thing to say and a valuable message people can relate to.
Yeah.
And you know, and now I think a lot of it too is, is, uh, I think I'm a great communicator, right?
You know, I try and get better than average, average moderate right now.
I think I'm a great communicator and a great writer.
And I think that really helps when a lot of people connect and follow me and retweet my stuff and find me.
And then I'm able to take that and put it in other platforms, put it on my list and my website and all that.
But the whole idea, the whole point of me bringing that up is I think that if you have something to say and you work on how you say it, we live in a great world where you can share that and connect with other like minded people.
I'm only in Florida because of the Twitter connections I made, right?
Right.
So those are the two parts.
And then the other third part is what I was saying at the beginning.
If you live life, If you have something valuable to say and give and experience, and it ain't got to be something crazy, you know, people here's a blow your mind, right?
We talked about the boxing, and to many people, that would be that thing, yeah, makes you famous, right?
Right?
Right?
But let me tell you something when I lost my fight and effectively disappeared from that level of notoriety, I only had 7,000 followers.
Wow, the peak of your boxing!
Wow, this has all been done since then via my writing, via what I say, my speaking, and everything I do, and so.
That lets me know, right?
You know, I'm talking about some real time feedback.
What should you do with your life?
That lets me know that I have something unique to offer.
People see something unique and it makes, and I would be foolish to not take advantage of it.
This is the decision I made my final year of school when I was 30, 33, right?
I said, you know, I don't have the personality to.
Working a lot, or rather, it was more.
I don't have the personality to be behind the scenes, very much.
You know, MBTI, whether you think it's trash or not, my MBTI is ENTJ, and I fit that to a T, both positive and negative.
You're what?
ENTJ, extroverted, intuitive.
Oh man, I can't even remember.
Oh, okay, but but yeah, you it's some people know what it is, some people won't, okay.
But very much extroverted, very much interested in interacting with people.
And so, all of the jobs I saw that my career path was taking me down, they were not that.
And so I was like, all right, whatever, not interested.
And then that explains why I love the teaching.
I get up front to talk and communicate with people.
I mean, I really love tutoring.
I continued it longer than I had to.
It started as a thing I needed to do for money.
And it ended with me going, well, I really like this.
But at this point, it costs more of my money and time to go than it's worth.
It very much was a side thing that I was having fun with doing.
And I find these.
This communication, I get so much out of it.
There's something about sitting here connecting with people and connecting.
And then, however, my brain works, I think I'm very good at explaining things.
And all these things really come together.
And I say, half joking, 40% joking, half 40%, that Twitter was really made for people like me that I can sit and write.
And then on top of that, I can start a blog.
And I know it's funny.
I've gone back over my writing.
And I see how I've gotten better and better and better progressively.
Yeah.
Better able to express the same idea with fewer words.
My word economies improve.
My word choices improve.
And I continue to sharpen it up because that's what I love to do.
People are like, man, why don't you start a YouTube channel?
I'm like, yeah, but then I got to do a YouTube channel.
Like, not interested.
I want to write.
I want to write.
I want to communicate with that method, you know?
That's cool.
Have a good time.
Yeah, there's a lot.
People are different in the way they like to communicate on social media.
Like, Instagram and Twitter are so different.
Yeah.
Like, there's some people who just love posting pictures and being vague about things.
And there's people who just All day fucking tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, talking about things like what they feel, what they like a cool quote they saw.
Right.
I think it's interesting to be able to do both.
I mean, you got to be able to, because like if you're a visual thinker or a visual communicator versus.
And it's a great challenge because now the next thing I was like, okay, I'm doing well on Twitter.
Yeah.
Let me try Instagram out.
Right.
Pretty much I'm trying to avoid a thing that is going to require a huge investment of my time, like putting together a channel.
So I was like, let me do Instagram.
And I'm having a lot of fun with that.
I passed 10K, so now I can send people back to my website.
Oh, nice.
Via my stories.
But I'm having a lot of fun with that.
But what it's taught me is that words do one thing, pictures do another thing.
And if you want to, if you can, the more things you can do, the more options you have.
And if you are, and I can really figure out, I can learn the whole, because look, the whole hashtag system figured it out.
Well, I didn't figure it out, but like realize it's nothing more than an SEO.
The SEO, I did just applaud to a thing.
You know, the more followers you have, The more hashtags you can rank, or rather, hashtags have a certain number of posts attached to them.
And the more followers you have, the more likely you are to rank if you put something in that hashtag.
And each post has a finite amount of like outlink energy based on outlink energy.
That's, I guess, outlink points.
You know, like you can only put so many links on a website before each individual link loses its ability to be a follow link and get you.
SEO point.
Same idea with IG, right?
So, really understanding this, right?
It becomes more deliberate.
I'm not just hashtagging for, oh, I think this is cool.
Hashtag, you know, goals.
Hashtag this.
Right.
Some people have a freaking hundred thousand hashtags on their posts.
Right.
So, I goes, oh, no, let's pick something a little smaller where I can get on the front page of that based on the things that people are following.
And it turns into a really fun game.
These games of connection are really interesting to me.
Do you, for Instagram, do you screenshot your tweets and post them on Instagram?
I used to.
That's a hack.
Dude, that works good for me at least.
Really, yeah, maybe you know, maybe I should get back to it.
I don't know, yeah, you got to do that.
Man, the hash the screenshots from Twitter to Instagram that's you know what I've been doing, I've been sending them to my stories, and then but I think I'll probably get some more out of it.
Oh, yeah, because on the one end, you talk to these pros who run these agencies.
Well, I'm learning them when someone says they run an agency, yeah, yeah.
All right, look.
Well, here's the biggest sign for me if you tell me you run an agency and your Twitter account is smaller, exactly, then I can.
I can't like, like, I can't listen to you.
Like, I do a lot of stuff helping people go to Twitter, and I can do it because there's just not going to be many people more who have more followers than me, right?
Even if I was full of shit, which I'm not, but even if I was, then that was they're going to look at my follow count and the ratio as well.
Okay, okay, yeah, we got it.
We have to at least listen to this guy, right?
Yeah, they can't just write me off.
But I get guys right, me to go, you know, here's a thing, you know, and we do this and we do.
That and we have these accounts, and I look and I go, Yeah, man, but you got like 900 followers, bro.
Like, whatever.
Well, how are you gonna help me get to where I'm trying to go now?
I'm working with one group now, and the people who reached out to me are okay.
I see you've done the thing that you say that you can do for me.
I see that you walk the walk, yeah, and so I'm in, you know.
Yeah, we'll see how it goes.
Hell yeah, man.
Well, cool.
I think we're about to hit your time limit here, we're about an hour and a half in.
Awesome, man.
This is fun.
Yeah, where can people find your stuff?
Where can they watch your videos, read your books?
Oh, my videos.
That's all over here.
But read my books.
You know, just put my name, Ed Lattimore, on Amazon.
You'll see them.
It was really smart about it.
Or rather, I'm really fortunate that I have the name Ed Lattimore and no one beat me to it.
I feel bad for the guy who comes up next who wants to use Ed Lattimore because my website is edlattimore.com.
Nice.
My Instagram is Ed Lattimore.
My Twitter is Ed Lattimore.
No problem.
My Facebook page is Ed Lattimore.
And very simple, too, right?
The only trouble is that, like, the way Lattimore is pronounced, or as I would spell, some people put two T's in there.
Nope.
I'm one T, Ed Lattimore.
And at latimore.com, at latimore.com, at latimore on Instagram, at latimore on Twitter.
Hell yeah, man.
Cool, man.
Well, thank you so much for coming out here and sharing your knowledge and your wisdom and your stories.